Egyptian Tourism Minister handed jail term

by Alister POOLE on May 10, 2011

Egypt’s ex-Tourism Minister Zuhair Garranah was jailed for five years today on corruption charges, an Egyptian judicial source confirmed today.

Garranah had illegally handed out tourism licences, the source said. Just last week, former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly received a 12 year jail sentence for being found guilty of money-laundering and profiteering.

After February’s uprising that saw the government overthrown, a string of former officials in Egypt have been investigated or are having their previous dealings looked into. Garranah was charged with wasting $51m in public funding after authorising sales of state-owned propety and land for fees that were well below the actual market price.

Over 20 Mubarak-era ministers or businessmen that have links to President Mubarak’s regime have been in custody since his departure, which is mainly due to the fact that trials for all corrupt officials was a demand of protestors that refused to back down until their leader at the time agreed to leave office.

Although the north African country’s new government has demanded that he be moved to prison, Mr Mubarak is resting in a Sharm-el-Sheik hospital close to the Red Sea. He is being investigated over the involvement he had in the killing of at least 846 protestors that objected to his rule. According to sources, the majority of them were shot in either the head or the chest.